Math Problem Solved in Python

I use the Python programming language, and came across a mathematics problem in an oldish (July 2005) copy of News Scientist.

The problem (number 1343 in their regular enigma column) was this:
Find the largest whole number, whose digits are different, and do not include 0, that is divisible by all of its individual digits.

After playing with it, and reading around a little, I came up with a small python script which could solve the problem in 10 to 15 seconds on my machine - and that is not on an unused machine.

Some notes on my assumptions

As any even number x 5 make a 10, which would not be allowable because of the 0 rule, the number probably does not include a 5. This assumption, which reduces the possibilities vastly is used throughout the code.

The code uses a string form of the number quite extensively since the digits are so important here. The skipnumberatindex function is not as clean as I would like - but it does what it is supposed to well.

So - here is my code:

def has_repeating_number(numstr):
for digit in numstr:
first = numstr.find(digit)
next = numstr.find(digit,first+1)
if(next != -1):
return (True, next)
return (False, -1)
def can_be_divided_by_digits(number,numstr):
for digstr in numstr:
if number % int(digstr) &gt; 0:
return False;
return True;
#This base number saves going through the repeat and
#other tests when you have subtracted one from an inner
#number. An earlier version set the digits after to 9's
basenumberstr = "98764321"
def skipnumberatindex(index, number, numstr):
#skip the complex stuff if it is merely enough to subtract 1
if index == len(numstr) - 1:
return number - 1
digit = numstr[index]
while digit=='0':
index -= 1
digit = numstr[index]
digitminusone = str(int(digit)-1)
rindex = (len(numstr) - index) - 1
outnumstr = (numstr[:index],
digitminusone,
basenumberstr[:rindex])
outnumstr = ''.join(outnumstr)
return int(outnumstr)
#I have started at the following number for some good
#reasons. Since we can only have one of each digit, and
#that none of them are 5, or 0, then we can only have 8
#digits. Since we are going for the largest number,
#then the digits are present in descending order
currentnumber = 98764321
while currentnumber &gt; 0:
currentnumber -= 1
numstr = str(currentnumber)
#Skip zeros
if (currentnumber % 10 == 0) or (currentnumber % 5 == 0):
currentnumber -= 1;
elif '0' in numstr:
#Get the place of zero in the number, from the right
currentnumber = skipnumberatindex(numstr.find('0'), currentnumber, numstr)
elif '5' in numstr:
#Get the place of a five in the number
currentnumber = skipnumberatindex(numstr.find('5'), currentnumber, numstr)
else:
(hasrepeat, where) = has_repeating_number(numstr)
if hasrepeat:
#Okay - reverse the where a little
currentnumber = skipnumberatindex(where, currentnumber, numstr)
elif not can_be_divided_by_digits(currentnumber,numstr):
currentnumber -= 1
else:
break
print "Number should be %s\n" % (str(currentnumber))

If you have any comments or further optimisations, please let me know!